Piri-piri chicken

Ingredients

• Whole chicken1.6 kg
• Piri-piri chillies8
• Garlic8 clove
• Lemons3
• Smoked paprika1 tbsp
• Olive oil100 ml
• Vinegar3 tbsp
• Butter50 g
• Oregano1 tbsp
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cut the chicken along the backbone, open it out and press it flat.

   10 min

2. 2

   Blend the chillies, garlic, the juice of two lemons, paprika, vinegar, oregano, oil and salt.

   8 min

3. 3

   Pour half the sauce into a separate bowl; that half is for basting.

   2 min

4. 4

   Coat the chicken with the rest, working it under the skin, and refrigerate overnight.

   12 min

5. 5

   Light the coals and rake them to the sides; the heat has to be indirect.

   25 min

6. 6

   Grill the chicken skin up for thirty minutes, then turn it and give it fifteen more.

   48 min

7. 7

   For the last five minutes baste with the reserved sauce mixed with melted butter. Serve with lemon.

   8 min

About the dish

The chicken is cut along the backbone and flattened. It then lies flat on the grate and cooks through in the same time as in a pan, with no raw patches at the bone.

The sauce is used twice: half as an overnight marinade, half for basting at the end of the grilling. The same bowl must not serve for both.

Piri-piri is the African bird's eye chilli, brought by the Portuguese from the Americas and naturalised in Mozambique. The dish travelled from there to Portugal, not the other way.

Worth knowing

• — Set the basting sauce aside before it touches raw chicken. Basting with the marinade it sat in is not acceptable.
• — Direct heat under the skin burns it before the meat is hot. The coals must be at the sides.
• — The overnight marinade is not an exaggeration. Two hours gives a noticeably flatter flavour, and the difference is audible.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

52 g

Fat

42 g

Carbs

8 g

More from Mozambique

• Matapa — Cassava leaves pounded with peanuts and coconut milk, with prawns. Mozambique's national dish.